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20090423

April 23 2009 - FREE STATE, South Africa. As has only now come to light in far greater detail, about 300 Boer protestors staged a gruesome re-enactment at the Odendaalsrust magistrate’s court showing exactly how two local farm women, Alice Lotter, 77, and her daughter Helen, 57, were tortured to death at their farm in Allenridge near Welkom in the Free State in March 2009.

Picture of Afrikaner protestors at Odendaalsrust magistrate’s court. It is important to know exactly how these Afrikaner women were tortured to death to understand the deep anger which was being felt by these Afrikaner/|Boer protestors who had shown up with effigies --which they used to re-enact the women’s gruesome murders outside the Odendaalsrust law court. What has made this entire matter even more loathsome, is that while the Afrikaners were protesting against the way these women had been tortured to death, they also were being taunted and insulted by the local ANC-mayor and her counter-demonstration with local ANC-comrades.

About 300 Boer Republicans , left, headed by leaders Edwin Leeman and Eugene Terre’Blanche -- protested outside the court during the bail applications on April 19 of Thapelo Hlongwane (21) and Joseph Khumalo (19), two suspects who were arrested for these allegedly gruesome acts. Their bail applications were postponed to May 18. They were not asked to plead to any charges. The charges were however contained in detail in the court records.

Stabbed in their vaginas, breasts cut off live…

According to the police’s forensic evidence, the Lotter mother and daughter had died excruciatingly painful deaths: they were tortured by their murderers’ allegedly stabbing broken glass bottles into their vaginas. One of the women also had her breasts cut off while she was alive – and their blood was then used to paint anti-Afrikaner hate slogans on the walls of their homestead.

White Afrikaner police officers who investigated this slaughter and had to gather forensic evidence, were severely traumatised and required trauma counselling. And, despite the fact that the Lotter home was only one block away from the police station, no-one responded to the screams from these women while they were being slowly tortured to death.

The reason that it had been so difficult for me to obtain this information until today, was that the South African mass media has practically ignored this horrendous slaughter. The English-language news media reported it in a two-paragraph story, omitting all the torture details. The Afrikaans press also hugely diminished the shocking extent of the crimes. They reported that two farm women had been murdered, but did not breathe a single word of the mind-numbing brutality and shocking manner in which Alice & Helen Lotter were tortured to death.

PICTURE: The local mayor’s counter-protest, left was mounted against another death which has not forensically been proven to be one as yet. according to the police officers who are investigating this case. Local man Daniel Mothhanke was found dead near a farm and two white farmers had been arrested with two co-workers. The mayor drummed up a huge police contingent and some local ANC-members and all the protestors showed up outside the court at the same time. Although no formal charges have been formulated thus far, their posters read “Suspect are danger to the People’, and “No bail, rot in Hell”.

A clash between these two opposing political groups seemed inevitable.

Picture below: the Boer protestors were barred from going anywhere near the courtroom by a huge police contingent drummed up by the local mayor Ms Mathabo Leeto (the woman with the megaphone on the right). She headed a counter demonstration of her own with a group of local ANC-members. The four arrested men in the alleged Mothhanke murder, farmers Barend Jacobus Nel (29), worker Lazarus Leboko (29), worker Andries Moholo (37) and farmer Gideon Johannes van Zyl (29). had their bail application denied and ordered to remain in police custody until their bail application could be heard on 25 May. These postponements were ordered because the public prosecutor had booked off sick. The men were not asked to plead to any charges, and the charge sheet in the court did not contain any.

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Intense anger among Afrikaners about torture of Lotter women:

A major conflict situation seemed to escalate when ANC protestors started singing freedom songs, chanting political slogans and taunted the Afrikaners. On their part, the Afrikaners loudly sang Die Stem national anthem, which effectively drowned out the ululating chants from the ANC.

To quote the media, some "upsetting scenes were next witnessed". For at this point, Mr Edwin Leemans started stabbinglife-sized human effigies they had brought with them violently with knives and broken bottles, while other white supporters splattered the effigies and bystanders with fake blood. Next, these effigies were hoisted up on ropes and set on fire to the roaring approval of the white crowd. Leemans was quoted as saying that he wanted to ‘graphically illustrate the cruelty and savagery suffered by the two hapless Afrikaner women. http://jv.news24. com/Die_Volksbla d/Nuus/0, ,5-83_2503376, 00.html

The peaceful Boer protestors were met by wall of police -- and another surprise: waiting for them at the court room in front of this cordon of police officers blocking access to the law courts, also was the town’s ANC-mayor Mrs Mathaba Leeto. She had organised her own ‘anti-crime’ protest with a few local ANC-supporters, but against an entirely different case, one involving two white farmers and two black workers, arrested for the claimed murder of a local man Daniel Mothhanke (see details below).

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Mayor was ‘belligerent’:

A direct clash between these two diametrically-opposed protesting groups seemed inevitable. Mayor Leeto was described as being ‘belligerent’ by the protestors. She reportedly told the Boer-Afrikaner protestors that their protest was ‘illegal’ whereas ‘the ANC-protestors had obtained official permission’. She also ordered the police to “do their duty’ and take care of these protestors, but then tried to say in a speech, reportedly drowned out by the Boers’ loud singing of the national anthem, that the Boer protestors should ‘cross the colour line and join the ANC-protest instead’. This intimidation tactic was greeted with disdain by the Boer protestors, and they instead moved away, staging their re-enactment demonstration of the Lotter women’s tortuous deaths opposite the courtroom. Leemans said the presence of the mayor and her huge police contingent, clearly so intent on stopping them from peacefully demonstrating in this public place, was ‘truly amazing’: “Where were the police when these women were being tortured just a block away from the police station?’ he asked.http://jv.news24.com/Die_Volksblad/Nuus/0,,5-83_2503376,00.html

Graphic demonstration of Lotter women’s torture-deaths:

All photographs: Edwin Leemans, South Africa.

Caption below: ‘This is how the Lotter women were tortured to death’ – re-enactment at Odendaalsrust Law Court: of the murders of the Lotter farm women in the Free State in March 2009: broken bottles were stabbed into their crotches, one of the women had her breasts cut off while she was still alive; the mother and daughter were both stabbed repeatedly, and then set alight. It’s not known exactly at which stage they had finally died. Forensic experts believe they died very slowly, from blood loss.

Caption for sign below: Give them Bail, we will see to them…’ And then they showed the gallows where the guilty men should be hanged…

The term "genocide" was coined by legal scholar Raphael Lemkin in 1943, writing:

'Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actionsaiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves.

The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of personal security, liberty, health, dignity and lives of the members of such groups... '